Shaping Space

Marjorie Senechal, a world leader in mathematical crystallography, is Louise Wolff Kahn Professor Emerita in Mathematics and History of Science and Technology at Smith College, where she taught from 1966 to 2007. In 2007, she received the College's Honored Professor Award. Professor Senechal is currently Senior Fellow of the Kahn Liberal Arts Institute at Smith and editor-in-chief of The Mathematical Intelligencer, a cultural journal for the international community of mathematical scientists. Her areas of mathematics research are discrete geometry, tiling theory, and mathematical crystallography. In addition to numerous articles, she is the author or editor of ten books, including Quasicrystals and Geometry, Long Life to Your Children! (a portrait of High Albania), and American Silk, 1830 - 1930, entrepreneurs and artifacts.

• Preface.- I First Steps.-1 Introduction to the Polyhedron Kingdom. Marjorie Senechal- 2 Six Recipes for Making Polyhedra. Marion Walter; Jean Pedersen; MagnusWenninger; Doris Schattschneider; Arthur Loeb; and Eric Demaine, Martin Demaine and Vi Hart.- 3 Regular and Semiregular Polyhedra. H. S. M. Coxeter.- 4 Milestones in the History of Polyhedra. Joseph Malkevitch.- 5 Polyhedra: Surfaces or Solids? Arthur Loeb.- 6 Dürer's Problem. Joseph O'Rourke.- II Polyhedra in Nature and Art.- 7 Exploring the Polyhedron Kingdom. Marjorie Senechal.- 8 Spatial Perception and Creativity. Janos Baracs.- 9 Goldberg Polyhedra. George Hart.- 10 Polyhedra and Crystal Structures. Chung Chieh.- 11 Polyhedral Molecular Geometries. Magdolna Hargittai and Istvan Hargittai.- 12 Form, Function, and Functioning. George Fleck.- III Polyhedra in the Geometrical Imagination.- 13 The Polyhedron Kingdom Tomorrow. Marjorie Senechal.- 14 Paneled and Molecular Polyhedra: How Stable Are They? Ileana Streinu.- 15 Duality of Polyhedra. Banko Grünbaum and G. C. Shephard.- 16 Combinatorial Prototiles. Egon Schulte.- 17 Polyhedra Analogues of the Platonic Solids. Jörg M. Wills.- 18 Convex Polyhedra, Dirichlet Tessellations, and Spider Webs. Walter Whiteley with Peter Ash, Ethan Bolker, and Henry Crapo.- 19 Uniform Polyhedra from Diophantine Equations. Barry Monson.- 20 Torus Decompositions of Regular Polytopes in 4-space. Thomas F. Banchoff.- 21 Tensegrities and Global Rigidity. Robert Connelly.- 22 Ten Problems in Geometry. Günter Ziegler and Moritz Schmitt.- Notes and References.- Sources, Acknowledgments, and Contributors.- Index.

From the reviews:“It consists of a collection of essays by different authors about many different aspects related to polyhedra. … The book is amply illustrated and aiming at a public from 9 till 99. It will be of interest to a very broad public. Form a mathematical side children might be interested in geometrical puzzles and advanced mathematicians may be interested in solving the open problems, and the whole range in between will probably find something interesting of their own taste.” (A. Bultheel, The European Mathematical Society, June, 2013)